The present application relates generally to sheet or web dispensers, and more particularly to a dispenser apparatus for use in dispensing antiseptic, pre-moistened towelettes that are stored in either web or sheet form.
Infectious diseases remain the leading cause of death, world-wide, and the third leading cause of death in the U.S. Voluminous authoritative research, conducted during the last 150 years, by an array of pertinent disciplines, agencies and industries concur that frequent hand washing is the single-most reliable means for preventing the spread of infectious diseases.
Unfortunately, voluminous authoritative research also continues to reveal an abhorrent failure in compliance with this seemingly benign edict. Among the most intensely studied contexts--the health care, child care, elder-care, and food service industries, workers have been found to wash their hands in approximately 30% of required instances. Further, studies indicate that 30% of all food poisoning incidents recorded occur in the home, and at least 70% of these are hand-transmitted, person-to-person, fecal-to-oral incidents.
Particularly during the last two decades, the U.S. has been confronted with the following, ongoing, conditions: (1) growing numbers of emergent and re-emergent pathogens which are attacking with greater "stealth" force, and with unprecedented unpredictability; (2) increasing numbers of multi-drug resistant pathogens; (3) swelling populations of vulnerable immuno-compromised patients; (4) indiscriminate use of antibiotics, contributing to their growing impotence; (5) high-load pathogen sites which defy familiar socioeconomic boundaries; (6) an estimated 70% of transmission of pathogenic microbes via hand-transmission, primarily person-to-person, fecal-to-oral route; (7) the dissolution of our own health care infrastructure, such that it is an acknowledged contributor to the emergence and re-emergence of multi-drug resistant pathogens; and (8) globalization of infectious diseases previously limited by geographic boundaries.
Prevention of illness, personal responsibility for same, and the concept of wellness have, until recently, lingered about the fringes of health care. Our longstanding health care paradigm has been the medical model. Only the physician knows how to treat illness. Often, treatment addresses symptoms rather than cause. Generally, a "piece" of a patient is treated, without regard for systemic interactive physiology. However, a paradigm shift has been occurring. For example, more Americans have used alterative or complementary medicine in recent years than was previously the case. As such, it appears that Americans are turning to more natural, holistic healing modalities. In reality, at this time, there are no other viable health care alternatives.